In recent years, environmental problems including pollution and global warming have become a big issue. A major issue for vehicles is, for example, the reduction of exhaust gas, in particular, CO2.
In another aspect, because of a rise in traffic accidents, vehicle safety has also become a major issue. Reflecting the above issues, an intelligent or high-functional vehicle has been developed for improvement of safety related performance and environment related performance (e.g., fuel efficiency), attaining some progress.
The fuel efficiency is expected to be improved and the exhaust gas is expected to be consequently reduced when drivers are eager to drive vehicles economically. Also, the traffic accidents are expected to be reduced when drivers are eager to drive vehicles safely. The Improvement of driving acts of drivers is hence a very important theme. Then, making a diagnosis regarding a driving state of a driver and notifying a driver of a result of the diagnosis can be considered for the improvement of driving acts.
For example, JP-H11-272996A describes a warning system where vehicle traveling data is transmitted to an information center, and a diagnosis of driving is made in the information center, and warning information is notified to the driver based on the diagnosis of driving.
According to the warning system disclosed in JP-H11-272996A, however, successive notifications of similar warning information may bore a driver and reduce the merit of warning. Further, unless a situation requires the warning, the warning information is not notified. The usefulness or merit associated with making the diagnosis of driving is low.